


and the wind whispered mutiny

by cadmean



Category: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, cryptarchy study, runs vaguely parallel to Traitor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/pseuds/cadmean
Summary: Renascent deals in truths, and she weaves those truths around the cryptarchs like a fat, bloated spider would weave her web.But, Svir knows, there are always other spiders hiding just out of sight, biding their time.He endeavors to be one of them.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	and the wind whispered mutiny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neuxue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

The worst thing about Falcrest-the-city, of course, is that it’s beautiful.

Between Svir’s own various assignments that take him all across the Ashen Sea and Lindon’s house in the countryside, Svir’s spent far less time in the capital of the empire than his position would suggest. He knows he’s not alone in this – out of all of them, he’s fairly sure that only Renascent actually _likes_ the city, because of course she would. She’s sunken too much time and effort and blood into it to feel about it any other way. But Stargazer is always up high in the mountains far to the west, and Hesychast seems to take it as a personal affront whenever he must need visit the city in service to the faceless throne, and Itinerant—well, Svir supposes that Farrier’s relationship to the city is as fraught as Svir’s own, though for entirely different reasons.

There’s the university, situated smack dab in the middle of the town center. Svir’s never invested much research into it, but he figures that the university came first – or some sort of school, or the like – and the rest of the city evolved around it. It’s how it’s done in the Stakhieczi Necessity, and for all his country’s failings, Svir thinks that they’ve got the right of it in this regard at least. So the university is the center, and what’s now the trades ward sprung up around it. Beyond that are the residential areas, scattered as haphazardly as a handful of seeds for the poultry – there’s schools there too, of course, because Falcrest has always prided itself on its educational system. Teach them and they will come to love you, or something like that. Svir’s never put much stock in what Falcrest teaches, but he does have to admit that they’re singularly capable of conquering countries and subduing their people without those people even knowing what’s happening. Those decisions of conquest, in turn, are formally made in the parliament buildings: a monstrosity of shining basalt and high, arched ceilings that still can’t contain the sheer unwarranted ego of those speaking under them.

 _Falcrest in a nutshell_ , Lindon had told him one evening when they’d both already been more than a bit drunk and flipping through the various maps Svir’d had made for himself, _because what is parliament if not a mask for you cryptarchs to hide behind?_

And his assessment had been true enough, even if it smarted to be lumped together with Farrier and Torrinde like that.

When Svir first came to Falcrest, it was in chains of iron and steel; when he departed it again, it was in chains of hidden truths wrapped so tightly around him that he could scarce breathe. There had been one glorious moment – _wouldn't you, too, like to wield this kind of power, so all-encompassing that even your brother would no longer have any hold over you?_ – where he'd been certain that he'd be able to escape all of the chains holding him. But as with all things Masquerade, Svir'd quickly realized that in accepting Renascent's offer he'd simply traded off one leash for another.

But that was how Falcrest worked, wasn't it? Gat szich shit Masquerade, extending a single, poison-coated hand to the man teetering on the edge of a cliff. All Svir has to console himself is the fact that he's by far not the first to have blindly leaped into that trap, and that he won’t be the last by a long shot, either. Because, of course, that is how Falcrest works.

It would have been easier to hate it all if it weren’t so damn efficient.

* * *

As always, it’s just when Svir starts feeling good about himself and his position in Falcrest and the efforts he and Lindon have been making towards leaving the whole damn empire behind for good that someone – and Svir’s not quite sure Farrier believes in vendettas on a personal level except against Cosgrad, but it’s also usually always him, so perhaps he’s taken it upon himself to expand – decides to take a great big fucking mountain of a stone and throw it in Svir’s way.

The latest obstacle: an invitation on paper ground so fine that Svir couldn’t even see the fibers, penned in a tight hand that he’d recognize anywhere because he’s been forced to read so much of it.

_Svir—the restaurant just off of parliament’s main hall. Noon. Be on time._

No signature, because Farrier, apparently, is above such mundane frivolities now.

And here’s that leash again – gilded, sure, but tight and getting tighter still with every written word. Svir could just pretend he hadn’t received the missive, but then he’d have Farrier sitting alone in a restaurant somewhere, and as much as the image amuses Svir he’s absolutely certain that Farrier would use his time waiting for the main course to plot his revenge for the slight against him.

Oh, it wouldn’t be deadly, or even particularly violent; Svir knows that Farrier prides himself on being subtler than that. But his retribution would be precise, and well-aimed, and of course Lindon would bear the brunt of it. 

So you see: the collar they’ve got choking him is well-made indeed.

* * *

Svir exits his horse-drawn carriage with ill-grace and a wary glance at the sky above. From the color alone he’d guess it’d be raining within the hour, but this is Falcrest, and the weather this far south rarely behaves as it does back in his home up high in the mountains.

So: perhaps it will rain. Or perhaps it won’t, simply to spite Svir. He’d expect it at this point, honestly.

The restaurant Farrier specified is easy enough to find, though Svir’s not yet had occasion to frequent it himself – neither his tastes nor Lindon’s are for the sort of sugary shit they specialize in. This early in the day the restaurant itself is still blessedly empty, and the servers only offer him tea and some mild, spiceless bread when he sits down at a table. Svir agrees to the former with some awful excuse about having already indulged elsewhere, and chooses the latter randomly – the invitation he’d been issued didn’t specify a table, and so far he hasn’t seen anyone he recognizes within the restaurant. If Farrier hadn’t wanted him to choose on his own, he’d have said so.

He’s almost done with the tea by the time the waiter appears again to announce that Svir’s got a guest, and would Svir like for him to join him now? Svir wouldn’t, but he smiles and nods and practices at keeping his face carefully neutral while the waiter goes to fetch the guest.

Loathing claws at Svir’s throat with such intensity that he almost chokes on it when he recognizes the man now settling down in the seat across from him. The plain white mask he’s wearing hides his features quite well, but then his face has always been the least impressive thing about Cosgrad Torrinde.

Svir watches with a wary sort of attentiveness as Torrinde calls for the server again and orders the most expensive tea the kitchen has on offer. Typical, really. Not a word is exchanged between them as they wait for the server to return, and silence encompasses them as Torrinde plops in cube after cube of sugar into his tea once it's been served.

“Well,” says Svir eventually, flashing Torrinde the brightest fucking smile he can, just to spite the bastard’s own solemn expression, “a pleasure as always to see you, Cosgrad, especially since I was expecting Itinerant in your stead. I’m assuming you’re not here in his stead simply because you missed me?”

Torrinde tuts at him over his tea cup, but it seems almost off-handed, more reflex than anything. His eyes are focused on a point just over Svir’s shoulder, lost in thought – Svir’s not even quite sure whether he’s actually heard a single word Svir said, because Torrinde’s next words are, “Caird’s found himself a new protégé in truth.”

That shuts Svir up faster than any disapproving looks of Torrinde’s could have ever hoped to. A protégé. Svir’s well-aware that both Hesychast and Itinerant are rearing up candidates to hopefully one day join them in the cryptarchy – but Torrinde’s is always so, so busy, and Farrier’s been making for such an unimpressive showing that Svir’d have felt a vague sort of pity for her if he weren’t needing most of it for his own sorry situation.

Eventually, when it becomes obvious that Torrinde’s not going to tell him anything else without deliberate prompting, Svir gives in and drawls, “Baru Cormorant. I hear she all but destroyed our currency in Aurdwynn – how awful. How absolutely terrible. My heart aches for Falcrest, truly. If she’s Farrier’s, though, he should be the one to reprimand her for it. What’s she and her failure to do with me?”

And now, finally, does Cosgrad Torrinde finally deign to meet Svir’s eyes. There’s a smile now playing around his lips that’s sharp and utterly mechanical, and it’s all Svir can do not to flinch back when Torrinde at long last opens his mouth and says, “She’ll be you contemporary, if all goes well. For now, though, there’s a message Caird and I want you to deliver to her.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Hesychast sips his tea like a spider sucking out the last innards of its victim. “Tell her that, perhaps, Aurdwynn is indeed ready to rebel after all.”

* * *

This is how the cryptarchs work: they take a piece of metal that shows promise (that has seen too much, that is too smart, that will become dangerous to them) and they sharpen it. Sometimes one of them will take active part in its whetting, sometimes they let calculated neglect and the world at large do their work for them.

They will not try to wield the blade once it has been sharpened. Instead, they will point it at a target and announce, here, straight into the heart, and bid you take care to stab deep enough past muscle and bone so that the heartblood may quench you.

When at last you emerge, bleeding, dripping the proofs of your betrayal, you will have become the sharpest weapon in all the world.

That is when the cryptarchs will strike. A knife with no handle will cut its victim as well as its wielder, and so they will seek to bind you with ties you cannot bear to cut through. They will grip tight and fasten their strings around you, and they will say, here, is this not better? Are you not one of the sharpest knives in the world; can you not cut through all your enemies still?

And you are, and you can.

But you also know, by the handle they have wrapped around you, that you are _their_ knife now.

* * *

Svir sails into Treatymont’s harbor on his own ship, staffed by a crew of his own choosing and a captain he would trust with his life. But he’s also flying the Falcresti flag, and he and his crew are wearing Falcresti masks, and so when Captain Branne anchors _Helbride_ near one of the docks and beckons Svir over to one of the byboats, it is in the name of Falcrest-the-empire that he and Branne announce themselves to the harbormaster.

There are no dignitaries waiting for him on land, and he didn’t expect any. Instead of dealing with an overbearing welcome Svir instead pays the harbormaster the required toll – already reduced so as to be insignificant by virtue of the flag he’s flying alone – and gestures for Branne to follow after him as he heads off into the city proper.

It’s the first time in years Svir’s been this close to his homelands, and he finds that he doesn’t like it. He’s got no illusions that any Aurdwynni would actually be able to recognize him as the Stakhi’s lost prince, but there’s always the possibility of his brother having sent out scouts and spies and if one of _them_ sees him—well, there’s a reason he hasn’t set foot on this side of the Ashen Sea after he’d been made cryptarch, and it has very little to do with the sick sort of incrastic shame that Farrier keeps on needling him with when the topic comes up.

But nobody seems to take undue notice of him and Branne, or at the very least they don’t do so openly, and Svir decides that for his purposes one’s as good as the other.

“If your plan’s to have my feet fall off, my lord, I’d like to let you know that it’s succeeding,” Branne tells him a good half hour later, sounding only marginally exasperated with Svir’s antics despite everything.

They’re still trudging through Treatymont’s streets – not nearly as grandiose as Falcrest’s, but even so the Mansions’ settlements pale in comparison – and Svir would be lying if he said that he had any idea where he was heading. If Falcrest is a city built for efficiency, then Treatymont is a veritable warren: the streets wind and twist around themselves, at points becoming so crowded that Svir fears to breathe fully lest he accidentally push over a particularly ill-built hovel.

Taking his silence as the implicit disagreement it’s meant to be, she tries again a few minutes later with, “What are we doing here, exactly? If you’re not meeting with Baru Cormorant, we should be back on the ship.”

It’s concern moving her, Svir only now realizes – he’s afraid of his brother and his people because of course he has every reason to, but Branne is afraid for him, too. Now that he’s watching for it he can see her keep a close eye on their surroundings that goes beyond the regular caution of someone new to a city; her eyes darting about and examining closely each and every passerby who steers just a bit too close towards the two of them.

She’s too good to him.

But needs must, and in this moment Svir considers himself to be very needy indeed, so he shrugs at her and says, “It’s not her I’m looking for. It’s—“

And with Branne’s attention focused wholly on him now, it’s very, very easy for their pursuers to corner them.

* * *

Were Svir to try and sketch a picture of the Faceless Throne, he’d grab a vial of the darkest ink he could find and paint it like so: in the background a tangled mess of chain and thread and spiderweb, with Renascent crouching smack dab in the middle of it all. Her limbs extend everywhere, touch everything, but they are so thin that they’re all but invisible. She is large not in image but in influence. She _looms_.

The rest of the cryptarchs are all caught in her web. Some have entered it willingly; some, like Farrier and Torrinde, are spiders themselves, just biding their time to claim the cryptarchy’s elaborate net of blackmail for their own. They can’t compare to Renascent – not yet – but they’ve both begun to weave their own nets on top of hers, and it’s only a matter of time before one of them finally does away with the other.

Svir is caught in the web as much as all the rest of them, of course. But he didn't enter willingly and he’s not weaving his own web either, like Farrier and Torrinde are – unlike them Svir has no interest in taking over what Renascent’s stomped out of the soft, malleable ground of an empire without leadership.

No.

In the mountains of the Stakhieczi Necessity, there’s an old husbands’ saying that gets told around the evening tables in summer, when the sun his still high in the sky but little of its warmth filters down to the Mansions. It is in these months that the freshly-blooded warriors of the Necessity ready for their first sorties down the mountains – the paths are less treacherous, then, and the hunting parties won’t have to contend with the biting cold of winter on top of everything else. They breed success, these conditions, but beforehand they breed overconfidence, and it is terribly efficient at killing those it afflicts.

So to staunch the recklessness of youth, a few words of caution: For every spider you see pray take double the care, for there is another one biding in wait, just out of sight. The spider you see is dangerous, but the hidden one is deadly; the first spider’s webs are intricate, but the second one’s are never destroyed.

There is a spider, they say, hiding at the far side of the web. Biding its time, but no less vicious for it – because it knows that its time will come ere long.

Svir aims to be that spider.

* * *

Svir and Branne find themselves forcibly escorted into a veritable ruin of a little tavern room. Both of their wrists are bound in front of them – hers more tightly than his, Svir notes with an amused smile, and he’s not quite sure whether he wants to afford deliberateness to that circumstance – and they’re bid to sit down at the only table still standing hale.

Branne’s trying to catch his eye while they sit there waiting, no doubt to begin formulating their plan to escape, but Svir very deliberately ignores her. He mentally tossed a coin upon making port in Aurdwynn: heads his kinfolk get him, tails he is able to conduct the throne’s business unnoticed. Looking around at their captors now, one and all cloaked in dark leathers and hooded very deliberately so as to hide their faces, Svir is inclined to think that his haphazard gambit may just have worked out after all.

A somewhat slighter figure now steps into the room through the back door, just barely within Svir’s line of sight. The figure’s not hooded and neither is it cloaked, and so Svir recognizes her instantly the moment she steps into the light of the candle that’s merrily flickering away on the table. She’s not brought along her instruments of office, which he finds himself surprisingly grateful for – they’re grizzly things, and he’s heard enough hushed words about her mask that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be in the mood to actually want to see it.

“I’d apologize for the restraints,” the woman says as she settles down in a chair across from Svir and Branne in an awful echo of Torrinde doing the same, “but I’m sure you’ve had worse, and given the details of your missive, I thought it best to take . . . precautions, Apparitor.”

Svir grins despite the rope biting into his skin.

The coin landed on its edge. Xate Yawa is here.

* * *

Renascent deals in truths. She gathers them up and weaves silky threads from them, and when she has spun enough of them she wraps them around you as tightly as you can bear. All of Falcrest and its empty throne is built around those webs of awful truths – it is the fuel that powers the machine of the cryptarchy.

A small truth, then, one that will make for only a slim thread: For all that they blackmail and threaten and scheme, the cryptarchy could be harsher still. The threads its members have wrapped around each other are tight and unrelenting, but they aren’t suffocating. They _could_ be, and very easily at that. But Renascent and the others take great care to never quite cinch closed the noose they’ve got wrapped around Svir’s neck, and so he’s allowed to do as he likes until, like a dog, they roughly pull him back to heel and away from whatever closely-guarded secret he’s now managed to get his nose stuck in.

Svir knows, of course, that the reason for this is simple. Blackmail that is constantly being exerted will ere long become rote, unusable – much better to instead have the suggestion of it looming, the threat of it waiting just off-page, and to only utilize it when the threat is dire.

So while Renascent and her ilk spin webs of deadly truths, pulling all the members of the cryptarchy unrelentingly together, ever closer – while they snarl and hiss at each other and bare their fangs, hoping to scare some concession out of each other at every turn, Svir does the one thing he’s never been particularly good at: he waits and he watches and he manipulates the strands of Renascent’s web very, very carefully.

* * *

An old truth, to build strong foundations for the web: for a cryptarch, the only true crime is failure.

If Svir were to, say, join forces with Hesychast’s candidate for exaltation under the guise of aiding Farrier’s candidate, then that would be acceptable. If he were to use her in order to limit his own overt influence on events in Aurdwynn – for the Stakhieczi cannot take note of someone that isn’t there – that would be uncouth, but because it would happen in the name of keeping the terrible engine that is the cryptarchy running, it wouldn’t be punished. If he were to then use the time he’s gained by delegating most of his tasks to her to contact other, decidedly less Falcrest-aligned factions—ah, well.

Renascent’s Qualm, passed on to Svir early on in his dubious career as Apparitor: _As long as you do not fail, as long as you do not expose the cryptarchy, any and all actions are permissible. And if your own schemes do indeed end up running on a collision course with one of your colleagues . . . the answer is simple enough, isn’t it, Apparitor? Win._

Oh, he can’t be too obvious about what he’s doing, because both Farrier and Hesychast are sure to take any outright interference in Aurdwynn badly. Lindon’s currently embroiled in a silly little dispute over to the east, near Oriati waters, so they can’t come for him without endangering the war effort – but his wife and children are as vulnerable as they’ve ever been, and Svir’s come to love them enough for it to hurt, should they be taken as collateral.

But despite the limitations put on him, Svir does what a cryptarch does best: he uses people. While Baru Cormorant makes a believable enough attempt at rebellion, Svir and Yawa move their own pieces across the sprawling game field that is the duchies. Yawa cautions Svir to let her handle Erebog and Vultjag, and he cedes them to her while faking just enough ill-grace to hopefully not make it obvious how relieved he is to stay far away from the mountains. He lets her deal with Lachta, too, because he knows well the danger of getting caught in a siblings’ squabble; Nayauru, Ihuake, Sahaule and Heingyl he gives her as well, just because they remind him too much of home.

He tells her of course that it’s all part of the process of proving herself to her patron Hesychast and the cryptarchy as a whole. And it’s true enough, in a sense: should she see through his plans and refuse him, Yawa’d be well-suited to join the cryptarchs. She goes along with his directives willingly enough, however, and Svir supposes that this is the true reflection of her suitability – Yawa has her own plans, both for her exaltation and Aurdwynn as a whole, and helping Svir further his agenda helps her move along her own. It is simple expedience, though Yawa of course hates him for it, in the same casual way she hates everyone she can’t neatly fit into a category and easily win an edge over. But that dreadfully long summer with Farrier spent surveying the ruins of Kutulbha taught Svir nothing if not how to grin and cock his head and make light of the occasional assassination attempts she throws his way while he goes about preparing the duchies he’s left for himself.

When Baru Cormorant makes her play, one way or the other, Svir will be ready for it.

* * *

A regrettable truth, double-twined to strengthen the web: Svir makes for a perfect cryptarch. He’s young, he’s ambitious, he’s competent. It’s not bragging if it’s true, and if there’s one thing Renascent has made abundantly clear it’s that she and the others consider him nothing if not a useful asset to Falcrest. Most importantly, however, Svir is easily manipulated. He loves as freely and easily as Farrier flips open a new travel journal, and it is this easy affection for other people that winds like a terrible noose around his neck, pulling him along in whichever way the cryptarchs so choose because he knows full well that if he struggles against it, he won’t be the one gasping desperately for air.

Here then an uncomfortable truth, the other part of the double-twine: had Baru Cormorant chosen to rebel in earnest, Svir would’ve thrown in his lot with her. Not openly, of course – he’s opportunistic, not suicidal – but he’d have been able to move things in her favor from within Falcrest and the cryptarchy until such a time that his own preparations to leave the Masquerade behind were completed. He’s quite sure, too, that Xate Yawa would have abandoned her play at the faceless throne as well; Aurdwynn under Durance’s rule will never be a free Aurdwynn, and despite what she may tell him when they’ve both been drinking together late into the night, Yawa knows this.

But at the fields of Sieroch Aurdwynn’s Fairer Hand plays her part perfectly, just as Svir once played his, and they’ll all of them have to deal with the fallout, now.

* * *

The Elided Keep looms from up out of the horizon like a remarkable beast only just beginning to stretch. Svir watches it reach further and further up into the sky as they draw closer to it, his back to the main mast and his legs dangling out over the edge of the crow’s nest.

He wants, very badly, to just sail onwards. It’d be easy enough, he knows: he’d jump down to where Branne is steering _Helbride_ , and he’d quite flippantly say, “Let’s not make port there after all, there’s better places to be,” and Branne would worry and caution him against it, but in the end she’d comply. And Svir would smile at her and—

Ridiculous, of course. Just thinking about it already has Svir imagining Farrier’s snide grin as he orders his people to bring Lindon and Enwan and the children into custody.

When Svir does at last make his way down through the rigging, it’s to give Branne the last few coordinates to the keep’s hidden docks, and to then head belowdecks, where awaits the hostage.

Tain Hu is terribly fierce in a way Svir will never quite manage to be, he’s realized over the course of the last few weeks’ journey, but he doesn’t begrudge her for it – because that fierceness extends to her love for Baru Cormorant, too, and Svir understands that sort of devotion well enough. It’ll serve both her and Baru well, once Baru’s been inducted into the cryptarchy; Farrier hasn’t yet seen fit to share his plans with Svir, but even Farrier wouldn’t want to squander a hostage like Tain Hu on a prison cell. Perhaps he will give her an officership in the navy, much like Renascent once did for Lindon; or perhaps as a lecturer at the university in the capital. She is easy to listen to, is Tain Hu, and the way she conducts herself, Svir is sure, will have even the old professors in awe of her.

He’s already looking forward to having proper conversations with her, unhindered by her being chained to a pole inside his ship – he looks forward, too, to finally having a piece of leverage to hold over one of the other cryptarchs. Baru Cormorant isn’t Itinerant or Hesychast in terms of sheer influence, but she should prove to be a valuable enough ally on her own merits, and with Svir able to hold Tain Hu over her, he’ll be well-equipped to finally set in motion the last few gears for his and Lindon’s permanent escape.

Tain Hu greets him with a sharp-edged smile when Svir pulls open the door to her makeshift prison cell, and it’s only many an occasion’s practice that stops him from flinching back at the sight.

“Only a few more hours,” he tells her without much preamble, jerking his head back updeck.

Tain Hu’s smile widens, teeth bared as she nods. “I very much look forward to it. Baru and I, we have _so_ much we must discuss in preparation.”

With a bright smile of his own Svir returns back up to the wind-swept deck, where Branne is just beginning to shout the final orders for their approach to the Elided Keep. After a quick encouraging nod at her he climbs up the rigging again, until he’s once more sitting snugly up high in the crow’s nest.

The Elided Keep is so close now that Svir can just about begin to make out the rough details of it – and it is a terrible thing, a beautiful thing, just like Falcrest itself. And perhaps it is here, with Tain Hu as the impetus, that Svir will at long last be able to start pulling together the strands of his own web.


End file.
